Monday, August 03, 2015

Anderson Cooper anchored two live hours of AC360 from the NYC studio. The opening segment in both hours was politics with much time spent on discussing The Donald. The program ended with a 360 News & Business Bulletin.

4 comments:

I was five minutes late to Monday's 360 and then ended up channelsurfing a bit. When I got to the show the political panel was already talking. Jeffrey Lords, Ana Navarro and Donna Brazile were talking about Trump and the on-screen title stated a new poll had Trump over Jeb by a 2/1 margin. At the end they also discussed a possible Presidential run by Vice-President Biden.

Biden's possible run got it's own segment. Jeff Zeleny had the report and this time the panel was Patti Solis Doyle, Dan Pfeiffer and Dick Harpootlian. They talked about the likelihood of Biden running, fighting Hillary Clinton for the nomination and the poll numbers.

The next segment appeared to have three stories squished in. New news about Cincinnati Officer Tensing shooting unarmed Samuel Dubose; the gin bottle in the video did not actually contain any alcohol. Sunny Hostin and Jean Ceasarez analyzed whether this changes anything. Then it was, according to the on-screen title, "Memphis Cop Shooting Suspect In Custody". I first took that to mean a Memphis cop shot a suspect who was in custody. Nope, that wasn't it. It was a man suspected of shooting a cop who was now in custody. Also in this segment was one report by Daniel Berlant about the California wildfires. These fires were the lead story on the 6 pm "Situation Room", several reports from many angles.

It looked like Anderson needed time for his interview with Mick Fanning instead of adequately covering the wildfires. I figured we'd see a Fanning interview sometime on 360. Fanning was attacked by a shark during a South Africa surfing competition. I'm glad the guy is okay but didn't stick around to watch the interview.

The last report in the first hour was about Kaiser Carlisle; a nine-year-old boy who died after being accidentally struck in the head by a practice swing at the baseball game he was the batboy for. I read about Kaiser earlier in the day and seeing Gary Tuchman's report made me tear up all over again.

Late yesterday the second-place big story on cnn.com was about the Koch brothers, their money and their political influence. I would have loved it if Anderson had a report and panel on these guys, showing what it means to the rest of us when corporations are people. Hayes has reported on how Koch works in politics. Maybe Anderson isn't "allowed" to report on Koch since Koch buys commercial time on CNN?

Surprised to see a report on the Koch Brothers on 360--they are out to change their public image from the GOP's dark money overlords who want to destroy democracy as we know it--the Kochs and the other billionaires on the right with unlimited amounts of cash are scary--they're are reshaping state legislatures across the country into far right nightmares and now they're auditioning candidates to do their bidding in the White House. The Koch Brothers advertise a lot on CNN, so I don't expect hard-hitting investigative reports on them but there may be more reports about how 'nice', 'non-threatening' and 'misunderstood' they are. I'm not buying it.

Donald Trump did an interview with ABC trashing President Obama--Trump is not worthy to even speak his name, let alone to take pot-shots at him--President Obama probably has a good laugh every time Trump calls himself critiquing him.

360 continued to ignore news about President Obama and didn't report on his climate change proposal--I'm guessing the next president who steps into the White House will have his or her every proposal covered by 360--too bad they think our current POTUS is somehow not deserving of coverage unless they can attack him with a phony scandal.

On MSNBC, Howard Dean said he wouldn't be surprised if Trump wins the GOP nomination but he doesn't think he could win the presidency--I'm not so sure about that--there are a LOT of ignorant, racist people out there who are attracted to a loudmouthed clown like Trump--even AC is impressed with him even though he has shown he offers little substance in his campaign.

Ac360 lost me when they were trying to advocate for this young man who had sex with an underage girl who was 14 but lied that she was 17. I mean at end of the Day people lie. I don't think this young man is like the worse of sex offenders but law is the law doesn't matter if it was consented or not. I think AC360 should have left this out of the shower and should let the law and parents take care of this situation and not advocate for teen sex even if its consensual... they lost me on that one. We have no idea as the guys older if his attractions will be on younger girls or not... I just think AC360 should have stayed away from this story, kinda irresponsible reporting... not calling the young man a child molester but for them to answer own questions with studying or clinical view point wasn't appropriate in my view... idk. More polls show Trump is up double digits. I wonder how long this will last? AC sure is excited! Obama is being ignored sure is Dems unless its a scandal or attacking point...

Yeah, I can't help getting misty every time I see a story on the 9 year old boy who was accidentally hit by a bat. Such a terrible accident. I hate to hear or read news were children die. Glad the suspected cop killer is in custody. Police don't get their just do in our society. Its a very dangerous job. I understand no one likes authority but cops are our first avenue to deal with criminals and violence. So we need good cops and need to respect officers more. Welcome them into our communities.